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Let's introduce analytics to the discussion. I have a spreadsheet that contains, by session, every run I have made, currently 5,457. I have been serious about bracket racing since the 2010 season. This year has been the best overall year for me, in terms of wins (17) and runner up's (9).

So what do my analytics tell me.

The rarest run is a perfect light with a dead-on, therefore you win by making less mistakes than your competitor. Remember, he can screw up worse than you do and the objective is to win the round.

Given that our cars are machines, they are more consistent than we humans are.

You will lose more often at the tree (slow/red light) than on the big end (breakout/over dial). For me the ratio is 3:1.

^^^^
I believe it was your blog that i read. I really enjoyed it. Some helpful stuff in there!! If i remember correctly your car is close to stock, similar to the OP so you should be a good source of advice to him.

I took a photo of some time slips from a recent evening, but it's not letting me upload them. Well it did the first time but the photo was upside down. Deleted that one, fixed the photo, and now when I try and upload the picture it says I'm over my quota by 67kb. Resized it down by 1.5mb, still get the same message. I'm trying here, bear with me please. I'll get it posted soon. Anyone ever have this issue?

I took a photo of some time slips from a recent evening, but it's not letting me upload them. Well it did the first time but the photo was upside down. Deleted that one, fixed the photo, and now when I try and upload the picture it says I'm over my quota by 67kb. Resized it down by 1.5mb, still get the same message. I'm trying here, bear with me please. I'll get it posted soon. Anyone ever have this issue?

Just download the Tapatalk app, it's like $0.99 a month for premium and no upload issues

Alright let’s see if this works via Tapatalk. It did! Thanks, Punisher69. I already had the app, didn't think to try it. Okay, here's what I wrote when I first tried posting the pic:

I don't know that calling what I'm talking about a matter of inconsistency is totally accurate, what I want is either tips on how to make the car *more* consistent, or how to more accurately predict this car. Sorry if I wasn't more clear initially. And honestly, thank you guys for chiming in, I really do appreciate it. So I'm hoping this image shows large enough that you can read the numbers, but if not I'll repost with fewer slips in a few photos. My car # is B751. Also, the first pass didn't make it into this photo, but it was at 4:11, with a 60' of 2.110 and an ET of 13.891.

The questions I have are:

Looking at the significant drop from the 5:05pm pass to the 5:34pm pass, and then again on the next pass at 6:07pm, what should I have been paying attention to in order to see that coming? DA was 1841, 1684, 1302. Temp was 84.6, 82.1, 76. Wind was head-on between 2 and 5 mph for the 5:05pm pass, after that it stayed consistent between 5 and 7 mph. Burnout seemed solid on all. Obviously the 60' tells a big story, but how do I predict that ahead of time? Temp of track? That's the sort of stuff I'm really looking to learn I guess. Any thoughts/suggestions are appreciated.

If it didn't spin those first few passes, the tune does not like the high DA. Since your logging passes does it run the same time under same conditions on a different day?

It definitely didn't spin. One thing to note is that I rolled into the track at probably 3:50, hot out of stop and go traffic on a warm day. In those conditions, I expect a slow first pass and a better 2nd pass with the 3rd pass being closest to "normal" as far as ET goes. But to go from a .77 to a .62 to a .49 in the span of an hour, that's kind of crazy. .4 difference over the course of an evening.

This car does have some predictability as far as weather goes, like I can roll into the track and come close on a blind dial sometimes, but other times I'm way off and wondering what piece of information I'm not seeing that I should have seen. With weather, I'm watching DA, wind speed and direction, temp, and humidity.

I've also been fiddling with an app called Dr. Dial-In. ET predictor app, but the algorithm isn't based on DA. And you can fine-tune the prediction based on previous passes. What I've noticed is that my car seems to have 3 different "levels" at the track if I go by this app (which does seem to do a solid job of predicting, to a point). It will give me pretty close predictions for 2-3 passes, then the car will move to a different ET range that the app did not see coming, so I fine tune it again and it's consistent for 2-3 passes, and then another new ET range, which doesn't end up corresponding to data that I can discern (weather, burnouts, time between rounds, etc.). This is the stuff I'm trying to get on top of.

Are you winning or are you obsessing over dial-ins? Calculate the difference on each run between the 330 to 660 and the 660 to 1320. That will give you a clue as to where you "inconsistency" is occurring.

Are you winning or are you obsessing over dial-ins? Calculate the difference on each run between the 330 to 660 and the 660 to 1320. That will give you a clue as to where you "inconsistency" is occurring.

Thanks, Done. That's not an either/or question. I'm doing both. I've won some big (and not so big) races this year, but I've lost a lot more due to my lack of skill at the top end (I'm working on improving) and my inability to predict this car for more than 2-3 passes at a time. On the weekends that I can make a race, I run sportsman and pro, but on Wednesdays (rarely miss a Wednesday race), the category I run in pits me against all pro and super-pro cars, save for about 3 other guys like me running street cars. Most of my opponents leave off of a button, and some of them are running delay boxes as well. You have to be good on the tree and real close to your number to win. So while I'm working on improving how I handle the top end, I also want to see if I can get a handle on dialing this car better.

Kind of stating the obvious here but you had asked why the big pickup over the hour between 5 and 6. You also gave the DA for those times and the DA dropped a lot in that hour resulting in the faster runs. You could foresee that and adjust dial-in accordingly. 500 ft drop in DA is pretty huge.

Kind of stating the obvious here but you had asked why the big pickup over the hour between 5 and 6. You also gave the DA for those times and the DA dropped a lot in that hour resulting in the faster runs. You could foresee that and adjust dial-in accordingly. 500 ft drop in DA is pretty huge.

At our track at least, DA tends to be a 1:1 thing - 100' DA = .01 in ET. Roughly. And it was only a 200'-300' drop in-between passes. Also, it's pretty common on a Wednesday night at Sonoma to see the DA change by 1500+ over the course of the event.

I've been reading along, and don't bracket race....ever, but maybe what I noticed was too obvious.

If there's a 1:1 change with drops in DA, and there was a 200-300 drop between passes...isn't that almost exactly what your time dropped?

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

100' DA = .01 in the ET, so if at 5:05pm I ran a 13.77 and for the next pass the DA dropped 300' I would expect about a 13.74, all other things being consistent. But it dropped to a 13.62. If we do backwards math, that should have meant a 1500' drop in DA.